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| 91st edition of the International Labour Conference | 03-19 June 2003 / Geneva |
The 91st International Labour Conference assembled in Geneva from 3 to 19 June 2003. This year's debates were focused on the eradication of poverty through work.
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 The International Labour Conference is composed in a tripartite way: governments, employers and workers. Every year since 1919, it has brought together the representatives of its member states – currently 175 – in a joint action to ensure lasting world peace through better living and working conditions worldwide. Between two Conference sessions it is the Governing Body that guides the ILO's actions. This Body is composed of 28 government members, 14 workers' members (Basile Mahan Gahé, President of the WCL, is one of them by the way) and 14 employers' members. The role of the Conference consists basically in adopting the international labour standards and in seeing to their application. Each member state is represented by a delegation composed of two government delegates, one employers' delegate and one workers' delegate, assisted by advisers. The employers' and workers' delegates are nominated in consultation with the most representative national employers' and workers' organisations.
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| A special session on the occupied territories, current affairs oblige |
 The Conference was chaired by Mr Michael Christopher Wamalwa, Vice President and Minister of Labour of the Republic of Kenya. Three vice presidents assisted him: Mr Bryan Noakes (employers) from Australia, Mr Tomasz wojcik (workers) from Poland and Mr Muzahem Al Muhaisin (governments), Minister of Labour of Jordan.
One of the striking events of the 91st Geneva Conference was no doubt the special session of Thursday 12 June on the occupied Arab territories. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict could indeed not been passed over in silence. The position of the World Confederation of Labour to this issue is very clear. WCL Secretary General Willy Thys reminded of it in his address: "The WCL reiterates its rejection of any violence, regardless its origin. We condemn the suicide attacks as well as the assassinations committed in all 'legality' by a State. The WCL remains convinced that the main cause of the violence and the suffering of the Palestinian workers and people is the permanent infringement of United Nations resolutions that provide for the right of the Palestinian people to a territory and its own sovereign State".
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| The committees, places of debates |
But let us go to the various committees that market this great tripartite meeting. This year's debates were centred on four main topics: seafarers' identity, human resources (Myriam Luz Triana, of the CGTD from Colombia, was Vice President), employment relations and occupational safety and health (Habiba Zahi, of the CDT from Morocco, also obtained the office of Vice President). We must add here, of course, the Committee on the Application of the Standards, in which Luc Cortebeeck, President of the ACV-CSC and Vice President of the WCL for Western Europe, was elected spokesman for the workers' group. In the same Committee, further, Rekson Silaban, for some months the new President of the SBSI from Indonesia, was elected Vice President.
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| Seafarers, Occupational safety and health |
 As far as the Seafarers' Identity Committee is concerned, a new Convention replaces now Convention 108, adopted in 1958. According to the ILO, the new text establishes a more stringent identification system so "better to protect seafarers against terrorism and to make sure that they can enjoy the freedom of movement necessary for their welfare and occupational activities (…)".
As for occupational safety and health, the results are more complex. According to the ILO, over two million people a year die of employment-related causes. It added that every year 270 million industrial accidents and 160 cases of occupational disease were recorded. This situation was intolerable and required a response, it said. So, the workers', employers' and government delegates arrived at an agreement on an overall strategy. A plan of action on two essential pillars would be the spearhead of this strategy. The first pillar provides for "the introduction of a preventive safety and health culture", the second tends to develop an "integrated" instrument that would place safety and health among the primary concerns of the member states. It is, of course, up to the Governing Body to decide whether such an instrument will be developed or not. In the affirmative, the starting date would be the Conference 2005.
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| Field of application of the employment relation |
The Employment Relation Committee met for a general discussion. Andrée Debrulle, of the research department of the ACV-CSC from Belgium, had warned us that the debates would be very technical but that the political stakes were very high (see Labor 2003-02). At the end of many days of proceedings, the Committee asked to ILO to prepare a Recommendation on this issue. The adopted text advocates flexibility and points out "the dynamic nature of the employment relation, which will have to adapt to the new challenges of the employment market". It also includes the demand to pay attention to the "disguised" employment relation (in which the employee is deliberately not treated as such).
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As regards the valorisation of human resources and training, the debates were centred on the revision of Recommendation 150, which dates back from 1975 and had become completely obsolete. During the ILC 2000, a general discussion had been organised to see if Convention and Recommendation 150 should be updated. The conclusion was that the Convention remained valid but the Recommendation needed rewriting. New elements came out during this year's committee, among them the recognition of the right to training for all, the recognition that training can be a subject for collective bargaining and that the public authorities must support such bargaining, and the demand from the public authorities to reduce the inequalities in the matter of adult participation in education and training… The debates will continue in 2004.
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| Standards Committee, 25 cases but what with Colombia? |
 This year's Committee on the Application of the Standards dealt with 25 particular cases. The Committee decided to send "direct contact" missions to Guatemala (Convention 98 on collective bargaining – incidentally, at the very moment we are writing these lines, the Deputy Secretary General of the CGTG, Rigoberto Dueñas Morales, is still in prison and the threats against Alvarez Tzoc and other trade unions have started again), to the United Arab Emirates (Convention 29 on forced labour), to Venezuela (Convention 87 on the freedom of association) and to Cuba (Convention 87). In the case of Cuba, the government was most unwilling to receive this contact mission.
The introduction of special paragraphs was gained in the cases of Cameroon (Convention 87), Libya and Zimbabwe (Convention 87), and Mauritania (Convention 29 on forced labour). In this last case, Samoury Ould Beye, Secretary General of the Confédération libre des Travailleurs de Mauritanie (CLTM), affiliated to the WCL, reaffirmed in his intervention that forced labour was a reality in his country. He said that the authorities had failed to take the necessary measures to respect the human dignity. Introduction of special paragraphs for continuous default: Belarus (Convention 87) and Myanmar (Conventions 87 and 29). On the latter country a special session was organised on Saturday 7 June. On that occasion, Necie Lucero, Secretary General of the BATU (Asian regional organisation of the WCL), stated that forced labour did exist in that country and that it was coordinated by military officers. "Agricultural workers are forced to work a number of days without being paid, and this under threat", she added.
Much to our disappointment we learned that neither a special paragraph nor a fact-finding mission were obtained in the case of Colombia. Luc Cortebeeck, Vice President of the WCL and spokesman for the workers' group in this Committee, expressed his concern about the "practice of two-speed standards". At the Governing Body session of 20 June last, the workers' representatives reminded that the demand for a fact-finding mission had been introduced every year since 1998, to no effect. Another vote was held this year. Despite the existent impunity and the persistent violations, the large majority of the governments and all the employers turned down this demand that would highlight, in our opinion, the serious freedom of association violations exposed in this complaint, among which dozens of assassinations of trade union leaders, and obstacles to the exercise of the right to strike.
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 Like every year, a plenary Conference session was organised to discuss the report of the Director General, entitled this year "Working out of poverty". WCL Secretary General Willy Thys seized this opportunity to speak on this sensitive issue: "The World Confederation of Labour is convinced that it is necessary today to create decent jobs that offer each and everyone the dignity they are intrinsically entitled to. We believe that the world governance of the world of work must be changed to obtain an international perspective that takes account of the creation of decent jobs as the fundamental basis for the struggle against poverty and social exclusion. In our view, the world of work must be the subject of a study and a differentiated treatment in view of the importance of employment as a key factor of the well-being of all men and women".
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 Juan Somavia, Director General of the International Labour Office (ILO), expressed his satisfaction at the results of the Conference: "Whether in the matter of facing immediate threats like occupational security or in the matter of longer-term challenges like poverty worldwide, the ILO showed that it was adapted, efficient and well-founded in its way to seize the march of the world". He added that he drew "great comfort from seeing that decent employment is recognised as an aim in itself, but also as a means to achieve important goals, particularly the eradication of poverty. This demonstrates that the work of the ILO is completed adapted to the political challenges currently facing a large number of countries". Juan Somavia was re-elected Director General last March and got the support of the World Confederation of Labour.
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